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Thursday, September 27, 2012

An Argentine man planted a guitar shaped forest to commemorate his lost wife !

In
the remote Argentine Pampas you can find an incredible forest formed in
the shape of a guitar. More than 35 years ago, Pedro Ureta unexpectedly
lost his wife to a brain aneurysm. Devastated by the loss of his love,
he decided to create a shrine to her memory in their field that could
only be seen above-head from an airplane. Ureta chose a guitar because
it was his late wife’s most loved instrument.

Behind the great guitar of the verdant pampa, and its 7,000-odd trees, is a love story that took a tragic turn.

The green guitar is the handiwork of an Argentine farmer named Pedro
Martin Ureta, who is now 70. He embedded the design into his farm many
years ago, and maintains it to this day, as a tribute to his late wife,
Graciela Yraizoz, who died in 1977 at the age of 25, of a ruptured
cerebral aneurysm, a weakening in the wall of a blood vessel that
eventually burst.

There, on the monotonous plain below, where pilots stare in
disbelief, is a giant guitar landscaped out of cypress and eucalyptus
trees. It is more than two-thirds of a mile long.

Most of the guitar, including the figure-eight-shaped body and
star-shaped sound hole, is formed of cypress trees. For the strings, Mr.
Ureta planted six rows of eucalyptus trees, whose bluish tone offers a
contrast visible from above.

Unfortunately, Mr. Ureta himself has never seen his great guitar from the sky, except in photographs. He’s afraid of flying.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

The allure of the tiger. As
the population of Asia's wild tigers has declined over the years, the
legendary animal has become a thing of fable as much as reality. But in
Thailand’s western province of Kanchanaburi, conservationists are
working to bring the tiger population back up. Visitors to Tiger Temple,
or Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua -- a sort of Buddhist temple-cum-animal
sanctuary -- can pay to be photographed with the tigers. The money, according to the monks, goes towards caring for
the animals. (Steve Winter/National Geographic Stock)

Tigers live in 13 countries across Asia and 50% of them reside in India.
Largest of all the big cats, males can reach 2.75m in length and weigh
300kg, and with 10cm retractable claws, they are strong enough to kill
and drag prey five times their weight. Short, powerful legs also allow
the tiger to achieve bursts of speed above 35 miles an hour and leap
more than 3m in the air.

Global alarm for the species was first sounded in 1969 following a peak
in the tiger skin trade. Twenty years later, there were an estimated
8,000 tigers left in the wild. Today, the tiger population is thought to
be fewer than 4,000 – though many conservationists believe that number
to be far lower. Pictured, a researcher in Thailand’s Huai Kha Khaeng
Wildlife Sanctuary -- where the tiger population has increased from 20
to 60 over the past two decades -- puts his ear to the belly of a
pregnant tiger, listening for foetal heartbeats. The improved health of
Thailand’s western forest and the increase in available prey (each tiger
needs about 50 animals, or 3,000kg of meat a year) suggest that the
tiger population in Huai Kha Khaeng could continue to grow.

The tiger's enemies are well-known: loss of habitat exacerbated by
exploding human populations, poverty — which induces the poaching of the
tiger’s prey — and the dark threat of the black market for
tiger parts. Less acknowledged are botched conservation strategies that
for decades have failed the tiger. Pictured, a poacher's snare on the
Indonesian island of Sumatra cost this six-month-old cub its right front
leg. Poachers have been known to use barking puppies as
bait to lure tigers into a trap.

The feasibility of bringing tigers back from the razor's edge of
survival relies not only on human actions in the immediate future but
also on the tiger's own remarkably resilient nature. An average female
can rear some six to eight cubs over her 10- to 12-year lifespan, and
tigers are not finicky about diet or dependent on a particular ecosystem
like Pandas. In Thailand’s Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary
(pictured) dedicated, by-the-book monitoring has also given tigers a
fighting chance.

In another example of remarkable resilience, Indian Sundarban tigers,
like the one pictured, are powerful swimmers and have learned to
supplement their diets with marine life. Tiger tracks have been found in
Bhutan above 13,000ft, an altitude overlapping the domain of the snow
leopard. "There is 1.1 million square kilometres of tiger habitat
remaining [in the world]," said Eric Dinerstein, chief scientist and
vice president of conservation science of the World Wildlife Foundation.
"Assuming two tigers for every 100 square kilometres, that's a
potential 22,000 tigers."

Take the high road! Chinese village's only contact with world is 1,000-yard zip-line at a dizzying height above valley floor

Don't look down! This terrifying zip line
stretching 400metres above the valley floor is the only connection to
the outside world for Yushan village in China's Hubei Province

If you suffer from even the slightest
amount vertigo then Yushan village in China's Hubei Province is
probably best kept off any list of potential holiday destinations.

For
despite its staggeringly beautiful location, Yushan's only connection
with the outside world is a precarious zip line stretching for a
dizzying kilometre, 400 metres above the valley floor.

A
pair of thick cables are strung between two high cliff faces with a
steel cage suspended below to carry people and goods in and out of the
village.

Short cut: Yushan has a population of just over 200 people and before
the ropeway was built in 1997, villagers faced a walk of several days to
get to the nearest village

Not a job for the faint-hearted:
Maintenance man Zhang Xinjian at work checking the cable ropeway
precariously suspended between two cliffs

Yushan has a population of just over 200 people and before the ropeway was built in 1997, villagers faced a walk of several days to get to the next nearest village.

The ropeway, which is powered by a diesel engine, is 1,000 meters long and 400 meters above the valley floor. Zhang Xinjian has been maintaining the ropeway for the past 15 years.

All aboard: Passengers wait to travel across the
cable ropeway connecting Yushan to the outside world and Zhang
Xinjian at work maintaining the diesel engine

He said: 'I started to work at this spot since the rope was set up. No one would take the job.

'As my father was the village head he had to assign me to do it and it has been 15 years.'Lubricating
the cables once a week is a very dangerous job. Zhang has to take the
cart and apply oil onto the cables along the way.

'In
the beginning, my father, my younger brother and I took care of the
cableway together, but later my younger brother quit and my father's
health went bad, so it's only me that could do the job'.

Stressful job: Lubricating the cables has to be
done once a week so Zhang has to perch himself on the cart and apply oil
as he slides along the rope

Reliable: A primitive-looking diesel engine is
all that powers the zip line. If it breaks down passengers would be left
dangling above the valley floor

Sunday, September 16, 2012

To Sua Ocean Trench is one of the
ideallic sites that is located in Lotofaga village. Few sites are
situated in the same area, including blowholes, and an incredible small
beach on the western side. To Sua is otherwise translated as 'big hole'
that is converted into a large swimming area. A ladder is installed on
site for visitors access to and fro into this 30 meters deep seawaters.
This site is surrounded with beautiful colorful gardens. The site is for
swimming and nature photography. There is a fee upon entrance.